Taking a contemplative social media retreat is a bit tricky since social media is part of my job. Still, I’m doing my best to scale back. Which means more time for zombie movies and zombie books.
(That’s a picture of Zombie Walt Whitman, in case you couldn’t tell. See my cool photoshop skills of an artist?)
Nothing helps a contemplative sabbatical more than some good zombie culture, right? Unfortunately, all my contemplation was confused by gore and beheadings until I stumbled onto this series about Zombie Theology. It begins with a poem (which left Mark D. Roberts quite speechless when I read it to him):
A Noiseless Patient Zombie
apologies to Walt Whitman
A NOISELESS, patient zombie
I mark’d, where on a little promontory it hunched, swaying;
Mark’d how it explor’d its torso, vacant,
And launch’d forth intestine, intestine, intestine, out of itself,
Ever unreeling undead innards, ever mindlessly flinging them.
And you, O my soul, make your last stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of zombies,
Ceaselessly swelling, needing beheading, impaling, dismembering by these hands
Till this brain that tempts them winds down, stumbles, feeds
The bridge I need will not be form’d till another mark some part of me
on a promontory, vacant, flinging intestines, watching somewhere for my soul.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Thought of the Day: Walt Whitman (queerty.com)
- RAP: Eating Our Words on Good Friday (highcallingblogs.com)
- Thresholds and Sanctuaries: the Mysterious Power of Place (seedlingsinstone.blogspot.com)
- Poem of the week: The Mangel-Bury by Ivor Gurney (guardian.co.uk)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=c761fc79-c260-42dc-ae08-fe2442c98a3d)
{ 1 trackback }
{ 7 comments }
i can tell that you have had some rest.
you are back in form.
flinging intestines…big eye roll and a sigh and slight smile while shaking my head. ewww.
OK, a poem of this caliber MUST inspire a response. Well written. But then I love Walt Whitman and have a deep appreciation for zombies. So what could be better? Thank you for sharing this!
Hmmm, great poem and very lovely Zombie Walt. Not the post to read while I was eating breakfast, however. Serves me right for eating my Rice Chex in front of the computer!
Reminds me somehow too of Hopkins–the compact language, the way I can almost hear and feel those intestines twining on a dappled day.
Very, very nice, if one could say that about a zombie poem.
Thanks y’all. Sometimes when I share stuff like this, I wonder if I’m a little bit crazy.
Brilliant. and hilarious. Would make Saun of the Dead proud.
this will take me some time to digest the intestinal jargan and bloody mess of soul searching :0) it is deep and reveals much of my dark pondering soul – no joke
Comments on this entry are closed.